Glass: Android for office phones

Earlier this year, we took a look at a desktop phone running Android built by California startup Touch Revolution. While that device provided a look into the potential application of the OS in fixed telephony, the devices we saw were running a version of Android almost indistinguishable from the publicly available build.

Today, Cloud Telecomputers has debuted a completely unique build of Android as a part of its Glass "telecomputer" platform. The company's reference design has the Android environment running on a TI OMAP processor, and all telephony (VoIP and DSP, SIP Stack and Voice Codecs) being handled by a separate Audiocodes processor.

"Our approach allows us to focus on innovation, continually increasing the functionality of the Glass platform, while our partners concentrate their resources on branding, selling and tailoring applications for vertical markets." said Ravin Suri, Cloud Telecomputers CTO.

With Android running the front end, Cloud Telecomputers is leaving the door open for third-party or in-house application development. Naturally, the platform comes with its own unique suite of apps (screen sharing, visual voicemail, voice to text and salesforce.com integration), but the value is in Android's extensibility.

"By basing Glass on Google's Android, we have provided users with access to the entire world of Android apps. Instead of asking users to conform to proprietary standards, we feel that the value of Glass is maximized by working with applications that are already available. New Android applications are being created every day, and Android's user-supported development community is constantly growing," the company said.

Furthermore, because the Glass platform offers an open API, licensees can actually develop and build their own apps and sell them to other Glass users, or go a step further and create their own desktop app store specifically for Glass.